The invention relates to a feeding machine for feeding flat, flexible conveyed items which are input in stacks, in particular envelopes, into a station for further individual handling.
Feeding machines in which the conveyed items are input, as stacks of conveyed items, into magazines from which the conveyed items are pulled out individually, for example by means of suction rolls or grippers, and transferred into a station for further individual handling are generally known.
In modern mail-processing machines which operate at very high clock speeds it is necessary for the magazines of the feeding machines to be frequently filled manually with stacks of conveyed items because the stacks in the magazines are not supposed to exceed a specific height in order to keep the pressure caused by the weight of the stack at its lower end within such limits that the devices for pulling off the individual conveyed items can operate reliably there.
The problem of frequent refilling of stacks of conveyed items into magazines of known feeding machines has already been countered by placing before said devices an automatic feeding unit which, as a function of a signal which reports lowering of the stack located in the magazine below a certain level, fed conveyed items out of an elongated stack of upright conveyed items which is conveyed forwards approximately horizontally in a feed channel, by means of obliquely upwardly feeding conveyor belts which have a high degree of friction with respect to the conveyed items, initially upwards and then past an imbricator strip to the magazine in an approximately horizontal direction, without however in the process separating the conveyed items. The feeding of the automatic feeding unit which is placed upstream was continued until a further detector signalled a sufficient degree of filling of the magazine.
The object of the present invention is to design a feeding machine for feeding flat, flexible conveyed items which are input in stacks, in particular envelopes, into a station for further individual handling in such a way that the number of conveyed items which are input in stacks does not have to be severely limited, and intermediate storage of the conveyed items in a magazine is avoided.
This object is achieved according to the invention by means of the features of the appended Patent Claim 1. Advantageous refinements and developments are the subject-matter of the patent claims subordinate to Patent Claim 1, to whose content reference is made here expressly without repeating the wording of which at this point.